Cirrus@Austlit

'Wake in Fright was not, as commonly supposed, Kenneth Cook’s first novel. Two years before its publication, Ken, then working as a scriptwriter in the newsroom of ABC Television at Gore Hill, Sydney, dashed off a withering denunciation of the organisation and a lament for television as a news medium. But ABC regulations then prohibited publishing a book while employed as an ABC journalist, and in any case, for reasons that will become apparent shortly, Ken would have wanted to put some space between his book and the real events that inspired it.' (Introduction)